1. Field
Embodiments of the invention relate to updating retrievability aids of information sets with search terms and folksonomy tags.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the large amount of information stored, users continuously have difficulty finding information. Often, search engines yield too many results and a wide variety of results. Even search indexes often do not contain the appropriate index entries to help users find the information that they need.
Taxonomies and controlled vocabularies are being implemented across the World Wide Web (“Web”) and across information technologies, but again, these provide limited sets of terms or access points for the information. Taxonomies may be described as categories of information that may be represented hierarchically (e.g., in tree structures with parent/child nodes). A simple example of a part of a taxonomy may be a hierarchical structure in which a parent node is a car and child nodes are sedans and convertibles. Controlled vocabularies may be described as lists of terms with associated definitions. With controlled vocabularies, the designer of the vocabulary preselects specific terms to be in a particular controlled vocabulary.
Folksonomies (i.e., user-based tagging of information or user tags) are being developed all across the Web, but have the informality and incongruence of a wide variety of people assigning their own language to the information set. Folksonomies may be described as synonyms or other ways of referring to items. For example, a user who was raised in the United Kingdom may tag a sedan as a saloon, which is their word for sedan.
The taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, and folksonomies can be considered underlying retrievability aids for information sets as they are used to aid retrieving data from information sets (e.g., the Web, various data stores, etc.).
Thus, there is a need in the art for improving the use of retrievability aids for information sets.